These arrangements were carefully kept from the servants, who were only
commencing to sleep at night, and who retired, one and all, with barred
doors and lamps that burned full until morning.
The house was quiet again Wednesday night. It was almost a week since
Louise had encountered some one on the stairs, and it was four days
since the discovery of the hole in the trunk-room wall.
Arnold Armstrong and his father rested side by side in the Casanova
churchyard, and at the Zion African Church, on the hill, a new mound
marked the last resting-place of poor Thomas.
Louise was with her mother in town, and, beyond a polite note of thanks
to me, we had heard nothing from her. Doctor Walker had taken up his
practice again, and we saw him now and then flying past along the road,
always at top speed. The murder of Arnold Armstrong was still
unavenged, and I remained firm in the position I had taken--to stay at
Sunnyside until the thing was at least partly cleared.
And yet, for all its quiet, it was on Wednesday night that perhaps the
boldest attempt was made to enter the house. On Thursday afternoon the
laundress sent word she would like to speak to me, and I saw her in my
private sitting-room, a small room beyond the dressing-room.
Mary Anne was embarrassed. She had rolled down her sleeves and tied a
white apron around her waist, and she stood making folds in it with
fingers that were red and shiny from her soap-suds.
"Well, Mary," I said encouragingly, "what's the matter? Don't dare to
tell me the soap is out."
"No, ma'm, Miss Innes." She had a nervous habit of looking first at my
one eye and then at the other, her own optics shifting ceaselessly,
right eye, left eye, right eye, until I found myself doing the same
thing. "No, ma'm. I was askin' did you want the ladder left up the
clothes chute?"
"The what?" I screeched, and was sorry the next minute. Seeing her
suspicions were verified, Mary Anne had gone white, and stood with her
eyes shifting more wildly than ever.
"There's a ladder up the clothes chute, Miss Innes," she said. "It's up
that tight I can't move it, and I didn't like to ask for help until I
spoke to you."
It was useless to dissemble; Mary Anne knew now as well as I did that
the ladder had no business to be there. I did the best I could,
however. I put her on the defensive at once.
"Then you didn't lock the laundry last night?"
"I locked it tight, and put the key in the kitchen on its nail."
"Very well, then you forgot a window."
Mary Anne hesitated.